A Pennsylvania House committee on Monday passed a pair of bills that would abolish capital punishment in the commonwealth, potentially ending decades of limbo in which death sentences have been handed down but not carried out.
Both bills passed the House Judiciary Committee on party-line votes, with the Democratic majority in favor and Republicans opposed.
But the measures also illustrate the somewhat unusual ideological alliance that has long existed when it comes to eliminating the death penalty. One bill is authored by one of the House’s most progressive Democrats, Chris Rabb.
The other is authored by one of its most conservative Republicans, Russ Diamond. The bill has several GOP co-sponsors, although none of the conservatives who support abolition sit on the judiciary committee.
“There are no take-backs,” with the death penalty, Rabb said Monday. “It’s irreversible, it’s expensive, and our government does not have the moral authority to put people to death. I’m glad there are people across the ideological spectrum who understand this.”
“I approached this issue from a conservative point of view,” Diamond said. That includes believing in the sanctity of life from conception to death and the promise of Christian redemption, he said.
“I also believe that our criminal justice system is the self-defense mechanism for a civilized society, but there’s no element of self-defense in executing someone already in captivity,” Diamond said. “Permanent incarceration satisfies our collective need for self-defense.”
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision that forced most states to rewrite their death penalty statutes. Pennsylvania re-established the death penalty in 1978, but since that time has executed only three people, the most recent in 1999.
Prosecutors can still seek the death penalty, and since 1985, 482 death warrants or death notices have been issued in Pennsylvania, according to data from the state Department of Corrections.
In the majority of cases, death sentences are stayed or overturned by an appeals court. In the handful of situations where appeals have been exhausted, the governor has issued a reprieve to prevent execution.
Both Gov. Josh Shapiro and his predecessor, Tom Wolf, have said they will always issue a reprieve, citing the fallibility of the system and the irrevocable consequences. There are 94 inmates on death row, according to state corrections data, many with convictions dating back decades.
Prosecutors can seek a death sentence only in first-degree murder cases, and doing so creates extra layers of court processes and appeals. The result is that death penalty cases — regardless of whether the person is executed — are much costlier than an equivalent murder case where prosecutors instead seek life imprisonment.
Pennsylvania has shouldered those additional costs of death penalty adjudication, even though it hasn’t carried out any executions in 27 years.
A 2016 study published in the Reading Eagle found that the 408 death sentences handed down since 1978 cost about $2 million more apiece, relative to those cases being tried as life sentences.
Diamond described the current situation as “a moral minefield with far too many flaws and excessive expense for taxpayers.”
Despite the handful of Republicans who are aligned with Diamond, the bulk of the party, based on Monday’s committee vote, remain supportive of keeping capital punishment.
“The death penalty, in my opinion, should be preserved for those aggravating circumstances” which are already spelled out in the law, said Rep. Tim Bonner, R-Mercer County.
Bonner argued that the death penalty provides an important starting point for particularly egregious cases — such as terror attacks or mass shootings — even if it isn’t ultimately handed down.
“Do we at least not want the consideration?” Bonner posed. “Sure, we’ve had a decline in the application of the death penalty because now we reserve it for the most heinous murders, and we should not take it off the table.”
A bill to abolish the death penalty was also passed by the House Judiciary Committee three years ago, during the last legislative session, but never received a vote on the House floor. If one of the bills were to pass the full House this year, it would face even stiffer odds in the Republican-controlled state Senate.
Gallup polling this year showed 52% of Americans favor allowing the death penalty for murder cases, part of a broad decline from a peak of 80% support in 1994.
Polling of Pennsylvania voters from Susquehanna Polling & Research — commissioned this year by the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation and Pennsylvanians Against the Death Penalty — found that 29% of respondents preferred capital punishment to a life sentence, a notable decrease from 42% in a similar question in 2015.
The survey also revealed that 66% of Democrats and 49% of Republicans believed the government could not be trusted to apply the death penalty fairly.